Beyond Good and Evil:Open-ish Educational Practice

Nick PearceDurham University

about menew ‘open’old ‘open’what is open?2 case studiesopen-ish education

• Sociologist – with a pinch of STS• E-science, digital scholarship• Now teach sociology + anthropology– Foundation centre

• SCORE fellow – although what I say here is in personal capacity!

new ‘open’

•New technologies•Contrast with old/closed•Institutional level•Reveals problems •Limited adoption

old ‘open’

• Education and scholarship have always been about sharing

• New technologies become old, but persist

What is open?

• Making something available to everybody• Is this an ideal? – Not everybody will ever have access– Or interest– Or capacity

Reading pack and the CLA

• Mashup of content• Constraints on content and reach• Popular with students• New technology brings exciting possibilities

Powerpoint, BB and Slideshare

• New feature of BB9 of slideshare ‘mashup’• Already use for conference slides• Sex, Death and Monkeys

What are the implications for making lecture slides publicly available?

• Pros– Increased prominence– PR– ego-boost

• Cons– Fiddly licensing– fixation with numbers– Standalone vs lecture?

Open-ish Education

• If open is an ideal, could open-ish be desirable?

• Mixture of closed and open

Discussion

@drnickpearcehttp://www.slideshare.net/pearcenhttp://digitalscholar.wordpress.com/http://durham.academia.edu/NickPearce

Or even…n.a.pearce@durham.ac.uk